The Myth of Normal 133

other animals forced to live in unnatural circumstances. We might consider that the proliferation of “parenting experts” in our time is a sign of this disconnect and not its solution. Of course, early twenty-first-century culture isn’t exactly unique in this respect. Just as with theories of human nature, child-rearing attitudes, approaches, and doctrines throughout Western civilization have reflected— and reinforced—their particular time and place. It is a mostly dismal trajectory that includes infanticide, terror, and abuse: all, of course, normalized in their day. Around the fourteenth century, as the psychohistorian Lloyd deMause writes, “there was no image more popular than that of the physical molding of children, who were seen as soft wax, plaster, or clay to be beaten into shape.”[2] The intent was to break the child’s independent spirit, from birth onward. It was also around this time, he points out, that parenting manuals began to multiply in earnest. In the mid-nineteenth century arrived what deMause terms the socializing mode, the goal of which is the fostering of a socially functional personality, one that “plays well with others”—that is, conforms to society’s expectations. This approach became “the source of all twentieth-century psychological models.” Among them is one popularized by the iconic Dr. Benjamin Spock, parenting pundit for millions. In Baby and Child Care, his bestseller that influenced generations, the good doctor proposed a cure for what he called “chronic resistance to sleep in infancy.” The way to ensure that the infant doesn’t “get away with such tyranny,” he wrote, was to “say good night affectionately but firmly, walk out of the room, and don’t go back.” That’s right: the “tyranny” of a baby who is physiologically and emotionally programmed to crave physical closeness with the parent, as do all mammalian young. Today the socialization mode still dominates much of the advice parents continue to receive from “experts” and peers. Recently Jordan Peterson weighed in on how to raise “sophisticated denizens of the world outside the family.” In his mega-selling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Peterson cautions parents: “You love your kids, after all. If their actions make you dislike them, think what an effect they will have on other people, who